Lumina

Nice attempt. The combination of the low visibility, the slow movement speed, and the fact that you start at the beginning every time you die results in a game that is incredibly frustrating to play. Also I don't understand how this ties in with the theme.

This game absolutely oozes athmosphere! Very beautiful game, both visually and audibly. Was very easy to get immersed into the game.

I just had no idea what I was doing at first, however I kept playing. I realised that I have to collect the white orbs to grow my light and avoid the red things.

Good work!

Loved the graphics, but I feel that the reveal wasn't really used to its potential and the ending was a little lack luster. But I loved the game.

Pretty good game. Good atmosphere, nice visuals and moody/non-abrasive sounds and music made it enjoyable. The only negative for me was the lack of checkpoints. Great job!

Loved the atmosphere! The character is very cute, the light tail was really well done.

I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing though, I think shorter levels or tutorial levels could be really beneficial.

Very atmospheric! The visuals were amazing. The appearance of the monster was genuinely terrifying and the accompanying sound really unsettling. Not entirely sure what my goal was, but great job overall!

Great audio/visual experience, but I found it hard to play in a frustrating way.

I tried maybe 20 times, but could never end up getting too far. The darkness is really cool, but it felt like it hindered the game because of how everything sort of blended together. I kept falling into pits because they just looked like more level to me. The Light movement with the mouse was good and is something I would use to scout an area, but some more contrast would be appreciated to be able to distinguish between elements. For instance, it seems like red=bad, but there are red things in the environment that are not bad like those crystals at the start of the area. At the beginning you are walking on this sort of criss-crossing metal texture which later indicates unwalkable areas. Similarly with the audio, the music is great but the sound effects don't give me a clear understanding of what is happenening. My light would drain and I wouldn't be quite sure why.

The beautiful and eerie and moodiness of the game was so cool, but I felt it got in they way when they should be working with the rest of the experience.

Graphics and atmosphere are great.
Mechanics were a little unclear at first but you can work it out after a few tries.
One thing I was unsure of was does the reveal drain your light faster?

All in all this is really cool, nice one!

Everyone else has basically said everything. Great atmosphere, great graphics. Some checkpoints would be fantastic. Overall, pretty gooooood! Nice work, guys.

Fun to play at first. I really liked the movement and the atmosphere was great, but after a while the repitition of starting from the beginning every time you die gets annoying. At least it made getting to the end satisfying

Did you accidentally make a game based on the 2nd Alakajam! theme? :D

Beautiful visuals and nice moody music. Why have the camera so far zoomed back that it's to hard to see anything when most of the shown area is black anyways. Those black pits of deathness were very hard to see and distinguish.

Some flaws in the gameplay. First of all, I felt like the control scheme was super awkward. Not a huge fan of isometric play area with arrows/dpad, whether if the controls are rotated 45 degrees or not (and that is kids why Marble Madness had a trackball and was kinda trash on the NES). An analog stick would work wonders here. Or just trashing the whole light thing and binding the movement to mouse.

And then there is the light/mouse aspect. Not quite fully clear about the mechanics behind the deaths and light getting smaller but seems like it was time based (with powerups extending it) and just clicking the light on once and keeping it held down seemed to have no penalty while each sequential click consumed a huge portion of it. So all you're doing is forcing the player to hold the mouse button down 100% of the time (or touchpad in my case, which got kinda awkward). Or the other option was to ignore the whole light mechanic which ended up being the best tactic for me at least.

The enemies (and especially their positioning and campiness) was very unfair. Like they were posted in front of each collectible so you usually end up losing the same amount from their stare that you got from it. And that at best, in most cases I hadn't already scouted my escape route and they ended up cornering me in a dead end or just left off camping the bridge I'd need to cross to proceed. Dunno if the collectibles were required to get to the end but seemed like the best idea was to just ignore them. Also, a stealth game where your enemies have better sight and map awareness as you seems like a weird idea. Well maybe that is where the mouse flashlight comes in but still there is sweet FA you can do about an enemy that has posted themselves an inch away from a collectible staring at it.

But yeah, rant over, good job!

Once I figured out the mechanics It was pretty fun to play and of course, it looks great, Good job!

Very pretty - I mean, really gorgeous and atmospheric - but very difficult to play. I couldn't figure out where to go after the two moving bridges, and with the enemies basically unavoidable and the main mechanic essentially a race against total blindness, I don't think there is much hope for me! I think you could have gone with more sedate exploration-based gameplay, introduced slower moving enemies later on, and this would have been much more compelling.

The graphic is pretty good! The game is smooth. Took me a few tries to learn what i was suppose to do. The only complain i have will be, i need an easy mode =x.

The game looked nice, but I had no idea, what I was supposed to do, and why I sometimes found myself back at the start. Also there were some red things that looked "bad" but didn't seem to do anything if you touched them. I also don't see how it fits the theme in any way.

Most of the easy criticism has already been dished out so just ogle at the scores while I think of something.

Overall: Average (5)
Graphics: Good, but kind of muddy and very dark obv. (7)
Audio: Below average. The BG loop is super short and doesn't quite fit the SFX (4)
Gameplay: Bad. Too many traps, insta-deaths and restarts (3)
Originality: Average. Seen it before, exploring and avoiding enemies in the dark. (5)
Theme: Above average. The darkness is growing, true, but that doesn't make it interesting. (6)

Ok…Here we go:

• Fair enemy placement and proper stealth mechanics, please.
• Alternatively double down on outrunning the foes. In this case no insta-death falls!
• Thirdly: How 'bout the darkness starts at 0 (full bright) and slowly creeps towards pitch black. Picking up a light resets the process and the enemies aren't visible in the dark at all!
• Another idea: enemies area always visible, as they are now, but don't move when the flash light is shone on them. With many enemies on the screen at the same time this would end up quite hectic indeed!

Not terrible, not great. Interaction design needs special attention, remember that in the future!